September 15, 2011

Ötzi, the Tyrolean Iceman belonged to Y-haplogroup G2a4

We now have G2a3 from Neolithic Linearbandkeramik in Derenburg and G2a in Treilles in addition to Ötzi from the Alps. G2a folk got around. He joins Stalin and Louis XVI as a famous G2a.

It was already clear with the discovery of G2a in France and Central Europe, that this otherwise uncommon present-day haplogroup in Europe was more prominent during the Neolithic, and Ötzi's data point seals the case.

In a sense, the triple G2a finds in Neolithic Europe confirm the origins of the European Neolithic population in West Asia, but renew the mystery as to how all the rest of the "players" of the European Y-DNA scene appeared on the scene, with everything except G and I first appearing in the ancient DNA record after the end of the Neolithic.

29 comments:

Why have you put below Austria and not Italy? If Oetzi was born in the hamlet of Velturno (which is also my son's name: Velthur) and came from the Remedello culture, he had something to do more with Italy that Austria. He doesn't become Austrian because Dr Vigl said he was of the haplogroup: ge tzwei a vier.

"In a sense, the triple G2a finds in Neolithic Europe confirm the origins of the European Neolithic population in West Asia."

As I have stated before, the middle Danube had millennia of contact with the Black Sea area before the advent of agriculture. As such, the area may have had a high percentage of haplogroups similar to what is found around the Black Sea regardless of where agriculture originated.

Central European grave goods also frequently include Spondylus shell decorations - sourced from the Black Sea. So, the trade connections remained while LBK spread through the Danubian corridor and beyond.

Finally, some G-haplogroups found in the Caucasus, Armenia, and Turkey are certainly from Eastward migrations. It is not a simple picture, especially since the neolithic European finds are already derived types.

I am afraid we might find ourselves in the same conundrum (mess?) as with R1b.

Many highly derived G's in Europe are clearly very old, based on their huge range of distribution and astounding STR variations. G2a (and some other G's) may simply have been part of a Danubian/Balkan/SW Black Sea LGM refugium long before the neolithic. It certainly doesn't look Near-Eastern or West Asian, by any measure.

G2a could be the archetypical pre-neolithic Danubian haplogroup, for all we know. Ötzi certainly does not look anything like what you expect from a near-eastern grain agriculturalist, and we haven't found the truly expected near-eastern y-haplotypes in neolithic Europe, anyway.

Gioiello, you should worry less about geographical and present-day regional affiliations. That part of the alps has been culturally Italic, Celtic and/or Illyric, Raetic, Roman, and Germanic over just the past 3,000 years. But I am quite certain, genetics changed much less - even more so, autosomal.

Labels oftentimes are rather unimportant. G2a to me means Danubian/Northern Balkan/Black Sea, or perhaps even a Moravian refugium - not an Italian one. Questa è la vita, or something like that.

Eurologist, I am Gioiello Tognoni del Badia, R1b1b2a (S136+), K1a1b1 (9932A)and would like to know who is in front of me with his tria nomina.G2 (but also G1) in in Italy from very ancient times. Some years ago I said that its origin wasn't in the Caucasus, but between Italy and the Balkans. Probably G-L497+ (the most part of the European G-s) was born amongst the Etruscans. I calculated that it is at least mesolithic in Europe and above all in Italy. During the LGM and above all the Younger Dryas probably your Germany was totally depopulated. Anyway my theory is that German, Celtic and Latin had the same origin from the Western Indo-European, but your language certainly wintered amongst the glaciers of North. I have demonstrated that Sud Tyrolern are genetically mostly linked to Italy than to North: see what I wrote to Miss Pichler about the Hutterites' mt-s: the H* of my father and my K1a1b1 etc. All the Deutcher south the "Limes" probably have very few of German: my R1b1b2a, many R-U152 etc. With all ghis I like very much the Gypsy Johann Sebastian.

I'm not surprised by the result, which seems to also imply major post-Neolithic population upheaval, probably prior to good historical records in Europe (as such a profound population shift could not have gone unnoticed), so sometimes after 6000 BCE and before about 100 CE. A Bronze or Iron Age transition associated with Indo-Europeans seems most plausible to me in that time frame.

Off topic: The new masthead for the blog is a vast improvement over the vaguely spooky one it replaced.

From a map of Yunusbaev 2006 it is clear that the hypothesis of “eurologist” of a Refugium of G in Central Europe is a typical German madness (but he isn’t a bad person, nothing personal against him). If I’ll be able to send it, everyone will be able to see. But the distribution of G (with a minor centre in Sardinia, anyway very ancient, at least Mesolithic) and another on the Black Sea shores, let me think that the origin of this haplogroup is probably due to seafarers, and the recent posting about the “Paleolithic seafarers in the Aegean” of 15000 years ago I think merits to be deepen. Jason’s myth could be a trace.

I knew that Ötzi wasn't good-looking enough to be R1b ;). Seriously though, could it be possible that the reason why there are no ancient R1b samples from Europe is that ancient Europeans cremated their dead which would have destroyed their DNA?

Oetzi was murdered and left in the snow. In away I am sorry he was G as it is a missed opportunity to see what other groups might have been there. The other Gs were buried.

It seems likely aboriginal Western Europeans used other death rituals. Air burials in which the birds pick away at the bones, cremations, boat burials. That is certainly what you would expect in cold climates where the ground is very hard.

In the Scottish Western Isles they seemed to place the body in a rock ring covered in leather for a while, and then burnt the bones and reburied the ashes. IMO it looked like death rituals in transition perhaps, or perhaps across different cultures.

I have long thought this is why we see mitochondrial U in the North and nothing else. That the U came from people who had a different death culture, more likely to result in surviving DNA.

What we need are folk who died in accidents (like Otzi) in which the body was never recovered and thus not properly prepared for the afterlife.

If it proves that indeed G2 was the Y haplogroup of paleolithic Europe then we have powerful evidence of the population replacement theory (damnit). As G2 is relatively rare now.

But I think we are just seeing the neolithic incomers as they disposed of their dead differently.

I, who is no one - in this particular field. Seriously - don't over-interpret. WYSIWYG. While I like archaeology, anthropology, and genetics, I am just trying to contribute as much as I can (think of) - because I am curious and have a good-sized brain. And no - I am not Euro, of the clan Lo, and the tribe Gist.

From a map of Yunusbaev 2006 it is clear that the hypothesis of “eurologist” of a Refugium of G in Central Europe is a typical German madness (but he isn’t a bad person, nothing personal against him). If I’ll be able to send it, everyone will be able to see.

No, no - that is not my hypothesis, nor my agenda. I only tried to point out that G2 is highly derived almost everywhere, and both pin-pointing a source and a time frame are unfortunately going to be as excruciatingly difficult as for the notorious R1b sub-groups.

All I tried to say is that Caucasian G2a doesn't look any more basal to me, and that G2a may have been (significantly) present in the middle Danubian region before the advent of agriculture. And that perhaps it is, again, much older than some people think.

(ii)leave the Danube at the confluence of the Drava in Hungary/Croatia, and walk up to its source.

(ii)leave the Danube at the Inn river (actually carrying more water there than the Danube)in southeast Bavaria, go upstream, then leave at the Ötztaler Ache, which brings you to the Ötztal Alps and the glacier Ötzti was found.

Now, of course the interesting thing is that G has been found at up to 14% along the river Drava, and the other aDNA finds in the region are from Bavaria and from Deerenburg, the latter of which you can reach either from Bavaria via the Saale river, or from the adjacent Bohemia (just north of the Danube) via the Elbe river.

I should add fun bit #2: you get to Ergolding (place of the Medieval G2a finds) by traveling from the Danube south on the Isar river. Needless to say, if you go all the way upstream, you end up where? In Tyrol...

A word on Germans.I am by nature pretty neutral, but let me say this as someone who has experience with Germans.The issue of Genetics and the Origin of Europe’s first farmers or the first tangible Europeans has degraded indirectly to a debate in the Media to an Immigration issue about people from the Middle East. When I first read a German article about Europe’s first Farmers and that they came from Iran “probably because the Author just needed some Muslims with high frequencies of G” made me grin.On the other hand even though it does not play a role in daily life, most Germans would agree that the term Aryan is a racist term, but in the back of their mind they take the term for granted in the original German context. European=German= ArierCommon terms like Indogermanen instead of Indoeuropäer speak for themselves.

I don't think anyone here is interested in your prejudice and anecdotal dribble about Germans.

As to Gioiello's comment, he obviously misunderstood me. No need to carry on with that.

As to the word "indogermanisch" - that has historical reasons. The word was first coined by the Danish-French researcher Malte-Brun in 1810, and in French, at that. At the time, Celtic wasn't yet recognized as IE, and Tocharian was of course unknown. So, the term described the then-known geographic range quite well.

This I wrote about the Ötzi’s haplogroup: “I have already expressed my opinion on other forums. I am for R1b (exactly R-P312) because this would be a confirm of my theories, that of an Italian Refugium of R1b and other haplogroups, that of the expansion from the Italian Refugium to Central North Europe till the British Isles, and Oetzi could be the haplogroup ancestor of the R1b found in these places. But I have said that I would be very glad of any other haplogroup which is esteemed more recent, and this would falsify all the theories about the Mutation Rate we have discussed in these last years and I have always opposed”.

Now Eurologist writes: “I just saw that in Ray Bank's compilation of G time estimates, G2a4 is listed as 3,000 years old. It would be good if STR-based time estimates had actually predictive power, and would not consistently underestimate the time by a factor of 2 or more once dated material becomes available”.

Stop, they (Nordtvedt, Klyosov, Vizachero and many others) have been won. Stop! Be silent!

And also Annie Mouse with her list and with the G2c said “Jewish”. All those Jews descend from an ancestor of a few centuries ago and who was his father and where he came from isn’t known, like pretty always for Jewish haplotypes. And when you speak of dates, learn to measure them before!

True, but nevertheless the term is still used,lets say with a certain undertone. I have the complete Brockhaus Enzyklopädie from the 80s and if you look up Hittites, it literally says they were an Indogerman. Volk “People”.

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